Jeffrey Foucault - Deadstock: Uncollected Recordings 2005 – 2020 (2020)

Gathering together fifteen years of unreleased studio work, Deadstock: Uncollected Recordings 2005-2020 unites for the first time sixteen songs culled from six studio releases and scattered sessions, to offer a vital document and an alternate history, illuminating the process of an exacting writer and artist. Introducing seven new original songs – and two released only in Europe – along with full band reimaginings of back catalog favorites like ‘Mesa, Arizona’ and ‘Ghost Repeater,’ Deadstock displays the arc and swagger of an album, making a coherent listening experience from the harvest of years and seasons.

From the Salt As Wolves session’s haunting minor-key reworking of Reverend Gary Davis’s gospel lament, ‘There’s a Destruction on This Land,’ through the desert trilogy of ‘Mesa, Arizona,’ ‘Any Town Will Do,’ and ‘Real Love’ – three songs written in three consecutive days of driving between shows on tour in the desert southwest in 2005 – to ‘Crown of Smoke,’ the real time companion to the narrative flashback of ‘Little Warble,’ to a rollicking tribute to the late great Tucson songwriter and slide guitar holy man Rainer Ptacek, Deadstock showcases every aspect of a body of work honed by two decades on the road and in the studio: from electric blues to country ballads, rock’n’roll punch to fingerstyle lilt, with delicately observed portraits and precisely weighted poetics.

Featuring the longtime all-star band of Billy Conway, Bo Ramsey, Jeremy Moses Curtis, and Eric Heywood, with vocal contributions from Kris Delmhorst, Pieta Brown, and Caitlin Canty, and two unreleased tracks from Ghost Repeater (2006) showcasing Iowa legends Steve ‘Chief’ Hayes, Rick ‘Rico’ Cicalo, and Dave Moore, Deadstock rounds out and elucidates a catalog notable for its range and depth, with a series of songs indelible in their own right.